The Trumpology series of columns are also published on Capitol Hill Blue where I am a columnist, and are informed by my 40 years of experience as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. I worked in Michigan as Mason Mental Health Center director and Middleboro, Massachusetts in private practice. Opinions on Trump come from my understanding of psychiatric diagnosis, psychology, and psychopathology. I consider Trump to be a sadistic impulsive malignant narcissist.

Search This Blog

August 26, 2017

Friday, Sept. 1, 2017Prediction of the week:Based on Trump being skewered for lack of empathy, plus saying “I love my dreamers” when asked about them in his press conference, I predict he will announce he doesn’t want to cancel DACA. His speech will have been outsourced to a writer who actually has empathy.QUOTE OF THE DAY

It (Governing) requires pragmatic problem-solving from even the most passionate partisans. It relies on compromise between opposing sides to protect the interests we share. We can fight like hell for our ideas to prevail. But we have to respect each other or at least respect the fact that we need each other.

That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct.

We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation. John McCain in today “It’s time Congress returns to its regular order" Washington Post Op-Ed.

Only the thinnest of veils hid Trump's anger at a February Time magazine cover that described Stephen K. Bannon, then the White House chief strategist, as “the great manipulator.” Without saying explicitly what he was responding to, Trump tweeted that he calls his own shots and accused the “fake news” media of lying.

The New York Times reported in April that the cover continued to bother the president, two months later.

So far, 61,734 mental health professionals have signed a petition initiated by psychologist Dr. John Gartner calling for “the removal of President Donald Trump from office” because of “serious mental illness” that they agree, “renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of president of the United States.” Narcissistic, sociopathic, histrionic and borderline psychotic are just some of the words that have been used by prominent mental health professionals in their description of Trump. Ironically these words are very similar to words used to describe the German dictator Adolf Hitler by various mental health professionals over the past 75 years. These mental health professionals include psychologists Dr. Henry A. Murray, in his report on Hitler to the Office of Strategic Services; Dr. Walter Langer, author of the book, “The Mind of Adolf Hitler,” and psychiatrist Dr. Harvey Cleckley in his book “The Mask of Sanity.”

Counteractive narcism

Langer is quoted by Harvey Cleckley, M.D. as having said about Hitler, “he was not insane but was emotionally sick and lacked normal inhibitions against antisocial behavior.” The OSS also came to the conclusion that Hitler was “a hysteric bordering on schizophrenia. An excerpt from the introduction to Murray’s report reads as follows: “Murray pegged Hitler’s personality as ‘counteractive narcism,’ a type that is stimulated by real or imagined insult or injury. According to Dr. Murray, the characteristics of this personality type include: holding grudges, low tolerance for criticism, excessive demands for attention, inability to express gratitude, a tendency to belittle, bully and blame others, desire for revenge, persistence in the face of defeat, extreme self-will, self-trust, inability to take a joke, and compulsive criminality.”

Coming Today: A new theme for my photographic day dividers. I hope you enjoyed Boston. Sorry Portland, it’s still my favorite big little city.Thursday, Aug. 31, 2017This is difficult to watch - and then remind yourself this is a president speaking. Everyone in the UK should see it.

Evening Update: Many of you have heard of Eric Schneiderman, the NY State attorney general who sued Trump over Trump University. Another name which may not have been familiar (I didn’t know it) is Cyrus R. Vance, the district attorney covering New York City where many if not most of Trump Inc.’s crimes were also committed. Either the state or city could prosecute.Here’s what you should know about Vance:

Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., was first inaugurated as the District Attorney of New York County on January 1, 2010. Over the following four years, Mr. Vance enhanced the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as a national leader in criminal justice by expanding the offices expertise on an array of 21st century crimes, including identity theft, cybercrime, white-collar fraud, hate crimes, terrorism, domestic violence, human trafficking, and violent and gang-related crimes.

As District Attorney, Mr. Vance’s many achievements include the takedown of numerous violent street gangs, dismantling of several major domestic and international cybercrime and identity theft operations, the first convictions of individuals on State terror charges in New York State Court, and the recovery of billions of dollars from international financial institutions that had been engaged in violating international sanctions for the benefit of countries like Iran, Libya, and Sudan.

Mr. Vance was reelected on November 5, 2013, and begins his second term with a strong record of significantly reducing crime in Manhattan.

In July 2011, Mr. Vance was elected by his peers to serve as President of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York for the 2012 term. Mr. Vance also serves as co-chair of the New York State Permanent Commission on Sentencing.

Mr. Vance was born and raised in Manhattan, and is a graduate of Yale University and Georgetown University Law Center. He and his wife, Peggy McDonnell, currently reside on the Upper West Side and have two grown children. NYC District Attorney website

With all this news about Mueller closing in, a song I danced and sang along with at our big end of summer party came into mind. It's "I’m Gonna Get You" by Eddy Raven (you can hear it online).

I suggest it as the theme music for the Mueller investigation. All you have to do is change two words:

Hope you like the way I talk
The way I smile, the way I walk
Hope you're in to how I dress
The way I think

And all the rest - ‘cause

I'm gonna get you
You're gonna hate me
No doubt about it
I'm gonna get you

When you're driftin' off to sleep
Close your eyes and think of me
Make it easy on yourself
Don't dream about
Nobody else - ‘cause

I'm gonna get you
You're gonna hate me
No doubt about it
I'm gonna get you

You can run and you can hide
But in the end you'll realize
You've been runnin' right to me
Turn around
And there I'll be

I'm gonna get you
You're gonna hate me
No doubt about it
I'm gonna get you

It ain't a matter of chance
Trumpy, it's destiny
There ain't no getting' away
It's just the way it's gonna be

For this president, a man with a notoriously short attention span and a singular focus on his own internal ego monster, the destruction and damage from Harvey is just one part of a perfect political storm approaching Donald Trump and his administration.

There are five political elements in the fall forecast that will combine to make Trump’s first autumn in office rough going.

Second, Donald Trump’s disaster on race isn’t over, no matter how many variations of the staff-driven cleanup speeches and remarks he reads.

Third, Trump’s promise to shut down the government unless Congress funds his absurd Wall led to members of both congressional bodies rolling their eyes so hard it’s surprising they don’t need ophthalmic surgery.

Four: Trump isn’t ready for (the economic disaster from Harvey) because he’s never ready for anything, but if a big part of his narrative that his brief, spotty tenure as president is an economic miracle, he’d better hurry.

Finally and fifth, the topic that makes Trump climb the Oval Office walls like a rabid animal; Russia. The Russia crisis never goes away, and never gets any better.

The perfect political storm this fall is coming. And the forecast calls for pain.

President Trump is not most people. He is a narcissist. He's the kind of person who starts wailing inconsolably when your mom dies. He's the sort of friend who descends into self-pitying coldness when you get a promotion. These kinds of poisonous people suck up all of the emotional energy in the room by turning everything into a maelstrom of selfishness and performance and rage. Everyone is, by happenstance or poor decision-making, stuck with a handful of people like this in their lives, but over time we find ways to minimize their presence, and to distance ourselves from their worst outbursts.

President Trump's leadership during the Hurricane Harvey nightmare is a microcosm of everything he is incapable of as a human being: sustained empathy, determined focus, and the ability to put aside one's short-term needs and desires for the sake of people who need help. He put the dark abyss of his soul on display for everyone to see.

↕↕↕↕↕

It's not just that he couldn't muster the right tone when he was in front of the cameras — White House reporters noted that, even in private, the president expressed no sympathy for the suffering. And while this provided ample fodder for sarcastic Twitter takedowns, the president's persistent emotional void imperils the fragile bonds of community and fellowship that are the only things holding this country together.

These are not political failings, things which President Trump possesses in almost biblical abundance. They are, instead, the pathologies of a deeply broken man, a person so devoid of feeling for his fellow humans that he reliably has exactly the wrong reaction to every single event that captures the public's attention. And while such people are, in some cases, deserving of a certain kind of sympathy, they have no business being in charge of the world's most critical symbolic job.

They are toxic. And we are stuck with one of these hapless egomaniacs as our president.

EXCERPT: A reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about this later Wednesday, and her answer was … something:

He met with a number of state and local officials who are eating, sleeping, breathing the Harvey disaster. He talked extensively with the governor, who certainly is right in the midst of every bit of this, as well as the mayors from several of the local towns that were hit hardest. And detailed briefing information throughout the day yesterday talking to a lot of the people on the ground. That certainly is a firsthand account.

No, it's not. That's a *second*hand account — the very definition of one, in fact.

Eric fought back criticism of the president's racist behavior by saying the president couldn't possibly be racist, because he hired people of color.

He also espoused the belief that the "government" of the U.S. wants Trump to fail.

The interview went further off the rails as Eric either made a cavalier suicide quip or was informing the world that suicidal ideation is a standard response to scrutiny in his family.

“If they weren’t talking about you, you wouldn’t be doing something right and it’s important to keep it in context," Eric said. "[O]therwise, quite frankly, you’d probably end up killing yourself out of depression."

Oh, and President Trump's “doing a great job.”

Below: This is the last in the August series of page dividers comprised of photos I took in Boston. I haven’t decided on a theme for September.

(Since I began to write this Lawrence O’Donnell was talking about the same thing.)

This Politico story leds me to wonder who else from the Trump entourage (including Trump himself) committed state crimes in New York which could be prosecuted by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. If convicted only Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, could pardon them.The following led me to wonder who else from the Trump entourage (including Trump himself) committed state crimes in New York which could be prosecuted by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. If convicted only Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, could pardon them. Half of Trump’s adult family could end up being indicted for financial crimes.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its investigation into Paul Manafort and his financial transactions, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The cooperation is the latest indication that the federal probe into President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman is intensifying. It also could potentially provide Mueller with additional leverage to get Manafort to cooperate in the larger investigation into Trump’s campaign, as Trump does not have pardon power over state crimes.
This answers a question which has puzzled me. My understanding of the pardon powers of the president was that he could only apply them to those charged with of convicted of a federal crime.

I’ve speculated to friends that given that many or most of Trump’s financial transactions involve his New York business why couldn’t New York investigate and indict anyone from Trump on down if felonies were committed. I thought pardon power in the state was reserved solely for the governor.
Lawrence and his guests also discussed how facing a serious state charge someone like Manafort might be willing to testify against high-ups.
But then I put that idea aside without checking since all the furor of Arpaio and what next Trump might do with his mighty pardon powers led me to believe he could pardon anyone for any crime anywhere. I should have looked up “can the president pardon state crimes.”

Go figure, I was right the first time. It’s black letter law:

​

Under the Constitution, only federal criminal convictions, such as those adjudicated in the United States District Courts, may be pardoned by the President. In addition, the President's pardon power extends to convictions adjudicated in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and military court-martial proceedings. However, the President cannot pardon a state criminal offense. Accordingly, if you are seeking clemency for a state criminal conviction, you should not complete and submit this petition. Instead, you should contact the Governor or other appropriate authorities of the state where you reside or where the conviction occurred (such as the state board of pardons and paroles) to determine whether any relief is available to you under state law. If you have a federal conviction, information about the conviction may be obtained from the clerk of the federal court where you were convicted. Read entire webpage

Well I almost beat MSNBC to get it out, but as tired we get of saying “this is big news” this may turn out to be bigger than we anticipate. As Lawrence O’Donnell just said, it would extraordinary if the federal government turned over prosecution to New York of a case this extraordinarily major that they both had standing to charge.

The story is going over into the Late Night show.
Remember Manafort’s lobbying work, financial transactions, and real estate deals many in New York.
According to Politico, about Schneiderman and his history with Trump: the sadistic bully has mocked him “relentlessly on social media and TV, denouncing him as a “hack” and “lightweight.”
And then there was the $25 million settlement last November due to the fraudulent practices at Trump University.
Politico also reports that “The New York prosecutor’s office also is looking into some of Trump’s business transactions and could potentially share those records with Mueller’s team, one of these people said. Those inquiries are in the preliminary stage.”

Can you believe this? In two minutes she describes Trump’s humility four times.⇄↕

But what Trump saw in Hurricane Harvey was a mirror of his own majesty. A storm worthy of a stud like him. A meteorological complement to one of his resorts, rallies or steaks. Something really, really big.

“Even experts have said they’ve never seen one like this!” Trump marveled on Twitter, and I read exultation into that not

because I’m sour on the president but because I have eyes. Also because I have a memory. He has used almost exactly those words to describe a buffet of developments in his rise and reign, always with an air of self-impressed wonder.

I keep hoping against hope that a new challenge will tease out a new Trump and that if he malingers in the presidency long enough, he’ll meander in the direction of eloquence, slouch toward poetry and tumble into inspiration. Stranger things have happened. I’ll have to get back to you on what they were.

But Trump’s hurricane talk and hurricane tweets were like his fair-weather fare: childishly intent on superlatives, puerilely obsessed with size, laden with boasts and lavish with discordant asides.

Evening Update:

Daily Beast Excerpt:

Documents disclosed this week show just how far former Trump Organization adviser and convicted felon Felix Sater will go to help his one-time business associate President Donald Trump. In emails released by the New York Timeson Monday, Sater bragged to the president’s lawyer in 2015 that, with Kremlin help, “our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it.”

Now a dive into Sater’s history on the web and in courts suggests the lengths Sater is prepared to go to damage a common enemy of himself and Trump.

Sater used his email and office address to register websites including IAmAFaggot.com, IAmADirtbag.com, several variations of FecalBoy.com and FecalMatter.info, CuntMan.net, Blackmailer.net, VaginaBoy.com, and dozens of other crudely named domains. CONTINUED

The co-author of this Lawfare article was interviewed by Chris Hayes tonight.

If Congress wants to do something about Trump’s obvious conflicts of interest, it has remedies well short of impeachment at its disposal. We think an impeachment inquiry is appropriate only for those blatant misuses of executive authority that no other branch of government—and apparently none of the president’s advisers—is in a position to prevent. Yet even narrowed as such, the House—when it is finally willing to do its job—has what the military would call a target-rich environment.

In our view, Congress should be evaluating at least three baskets of possible impeachable offenses. There is a good deal of overlap between these classes of misconduct, but they are sufficiently distinct to warrant individual attention:

his abuses of power, most obviously exemplified by his conduct with respect to the investigations into his campaign’s collusion with Russia;

his failures of moral leadership; and

his abandonment of the basic duties of his office.

At the extreme, each type of misconduct not only denigrates the presidency but also fundamentally undermines the security of the United States.

To start, it should be apparent to the reasonable member of Congress that abuse of power is the most prominent and problematic motif running through the Trump presidency.

If he’s to be removed, it won’t be through the constitution’s 25th Amendment.

Besides, it’s not enough to call Trump crazy. He’s far worse than that. He’s a serial liar and a cheat, a swindler and a con man. And, by his admission, he’s a ‘man’ who sexually assaults women.

In one of his masterworks, In A Dark Time, poet Theodore Roethk writes:

“What’s madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance?”

There’s nothing noble about Donald Trump’s soul. He may be a madman, but he doesn’t belong in an asylum. He belongs somewhere else.

Jail.

Troy Media columnist Warren Kinsella is a Canadian journalist, political adviser and commentator.

I think most Duty to Warn therapists would agree with this letter, although about half of those who commented don’t.Excerpt:

This is true of “externalizing” or “antagonism-based” conditions, including antisocial, psychopathic and narcissistic personality disorders, which tend to cause others harm and distress via aggression, cheating, manipulation and other antisocial behaviors.

These individuals often do not experience distress themselves. Ultimately, individuals, including politicians, can simultaneously cause serious problems for others and be mentally disordered (i.e., be bad and mad).

That result would strike those who elected him as elitist and anti-democratic. Don’t the people have the right to choose an exceedingly narcissistic leader?

For a president who is unfit but not impeachable and who still has the support of his cabinet, the Constitution offers Congress only this one way out, a declaration of impairment presented by a deliberative body of its choice. But that body need not be dominated by doctors. Senator Birch Bayh, the Indiana Democrat who drafted the 25th Amendment, which was ratified in 1967, specifically opposed relying on physicians to make what he considered a political determination.

If the time comes that Congress finds Mr. Trump unable to discharge his duties, its members should appoint a bipartisan commission dominated by respected statesmen to set the removal process in motion. Obviously, if a president’s health deteriorates drastically, medical consultants should be called in. But when the problem is longstanding personality traits, a doctor-dominated commission simply provides cover for Congress — allowing legislators, presumably including those in the majority, to arrange for the replacement of the president while minimizing their responsibility for doing so.

Peter D. Kramer is the author of “Listening to Prozac” and is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Brown. Sally L. Satel is a psychiatrist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Human cognition is a captive of confirmation bias: We seek out and believe information that reinforces what people like us already believe. Confronted by evidence that contradicts what we think, we double down; confronted by chance, we confect necessity. Instead of changing our minds, we tell ourselves stories and cling fast to our tribal identities. A universe that’s run by luck is terrifying, but a good narrative imposes causality on randomness, finds patterns in chaos and purpose in lives. Our hunger for knowledge isn’t as strong as our yearning to belong, to defeat fear and loneliness with affiliation and family. We may call the baskets into which we sort facts “true” and “false,” but at bottom they’re euphemisms for “us” and “other.”

And yet my awareness of the limitations of logic, my appreciation for the ways human hardwiring privileges feelings over facts—they don’t inoculate me from maintaining that Trump is objectively unfit for office. I can’t let neuroscience discount my claim to truth-value: I don’t think calling Trump a liar illustrates confirmation bias at work. The reason the people I see at Trump rallies on my TV screen believe the psychopath at the podium is telling the truth may well be their membership in Tribe Trump. That explanation may nudge my empathy for them upward, but it doesn’t dampen my conviction that I’m right and they’re wrong, and it doesn’t make their belief in the falsehoods he spews any less scary.

Science may be humbling, but humility doesn’t make me feel like a dope when I call out dopiness when I see it.

Only two more days of the Boston photo day dividers, so here’s a double taken at Christopher Columbus Park on the Boston waterfront. Note the camera shy girl on the left, and the sunbathing woman on the right and below.

Monday, Aug. 28, 2017

Here’s another story to watch for tomorrow about what could be a prelude to minimizing the US participation in the United Nations.Place a Bet: How many cartoons will be published tomorrow of Ivanka sitting on Putin’s chair.Here’s a messaging conversation I just had with another online analyst friend besides Drs. Gartner and Covitz. Here’s how she responds to my imagining cartoons of Ivanka on Putin’s chair:Analyst: As long as she only sits on his chair.Me: It’s what she is actually doing at the same time as she is sitting on his chair. Do I need to spell it out?Analyst: Not Necessary. I got the picture.Me: 😄😄 I am actually still chuckling at this….Analyst: I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time. 😍

😘

The same analyst friend found this on Occupy Democrats. Click image to see video.

Let’s call things by their proper names here. Arpaio is, of course, a white supremacist. But he’s more than that. There’s a word for political regimes that round up members of minority groups and send them to concentration camps, while rejecting the rule of law: What Arpaio brought to Maricopa, and what the president of the United States has just endorsed, was fascism, American style.

So how did we get to this point?

Trump’s motives are easy to understand. For one thing, Arpaio, with his racism and authoritarianism, really is his kind of guy. For another, the pardon is a signal to those who might be tempted to make deals with the special investigator as the Russia probe closes in on the White House: Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.

Finally, standing up for white people who keep brown people down pleases Trump’s base, whom he’s going to need more than ever as the scandals creep closer and the big policy wins he promised keep not happening.

This would be a good question for Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. What is this quote all about?

The Trump Organization was pursuing the plan in late 2015 and early 2016, according to several people familiar with the proposal and new records reviewed by the company's lawyers. As part of the discussions, a Russian-born real estate developer urged Donald Trump to come to Moscow to tout the proposal and suggested he could get President Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about Trump, according to several people who have been briefed on his correspondence.

Trump never went to Moscow as Sater proposed. And although investors and Trump’s company signed a letter of intent, they lacked the land and permits to proceed and the project was abandoned at the end of January 2016, just before the presidential primaries began, several people familiar with the proposal said.

Nevertheless, the details of the deal, which have not previously been disclosed, provide evidence that Trump’s business was actively pursuing significant commercial interests in Russia at the same time he was campaigning to be president — and in a position to determine U.S.-Russia relations. The new details from the emails, which are scheduled to be turned over to congressional investigators soon, also point to the likelihood of additional contacts between Russia-connected individuals and Trump associates during his presidential bid.

White House officials declined to comment for this report. Cohen, a longtime Trump legal adviser, declined to comment, but his attorney, Stephen Ryan, said his client “has been cooperating and will continue to cooperate with both the House and Senate intelligence committees, including providing them with documents and information and answering any questions they may have about the Moscow building proposal.”

Sat. Aug, 26, 2017Evening edition:The white supremacists admire Confederate generals. The Nazis, even more disturbingly, praise Nazis and fascists most of us have never heard of. Could it be that some of them have even studied the Nazi and fascist movement from the 1930’s? There’s just something particularly chilling about that.This is from HUFFPOST:

Big news: Now that it’s a disaster in Texas, Trump hasn’t screw up on Harvey (yet). Hmmm… he proposed cutting FEMA granting funding to states and cities by $667 million.

“Closely monitoring #HurricaneHarvey from Camp David. We are leaving nothing to chance. City, State and Federal Govs. working great together!”

In the days leading up to the storm, the White House had exhibited little public urgency over what authorities projected as the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States in a dozen years. The president began Friday morning with his usual stream of tweets about political grievances and settling scores with rivals, this time targeting Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).

“Tennessee not happy!” Trump proclaimed.

But as the president’s Friday posts make clear, it was the mood — and fate — of Texans in Harvey’s path that is the more pressing matter. Washington Post

Outrageous Don scripted his campaign as a series of professional- wrestling scenarios, complete with menacing foreigners, unclever nicknames and plenty of trash talk. When the show got him elected, he doubled down, taunting world leaders and journalists alike. We haven’t seen him in tights yet, thank heavens, but he did get a bit saucy with the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron. Trump’s improvised line about “fire and fury like the world has never seen” would not be out of place on the USA Network’s weekly “WWE SmackDown.”

You might say all politicians tell stories of conflict. But with Trump, it’s relentless. He takes us from bout to bout — Trump against China, Trump against Comey, Trump against Kim, Trump against Fake News — with a head-spinning undercard of Jared against Bannon and Spicy Spicer against The Mooch. Every policy choice, every personnel decision, every setback can be fodder for the next day’s script. Faced with alt-right fascists marching in Charlottesville, Trump spun an “alt-left” to pit against them. Washington Post

Let me describe for you the chandelier above Trump’s bed in his bedroom in Trump Tower. It’s a gigantic circular thing, looks to be about four feet in diameter, made from strands of cut crystals strung from the circumference of the circle to a gathering point at the center, which is strung with even more cut crystal in a smaller circle, below which hangs a single crystal ball that’s got to be five, maybe six inches around. Below the chandelier is the Trump bed itself, one of those gigantic “California King” things, at the top end of which stands an elaborate gilded headboard, swirls of gold-filigreed wings surrounding what appears to be a crest or mirrored circle, below which stretches a deeply cushioned white panel of some sort — silk, maybe? — with four king-size pillows artfully arranged against it. At the other end of the Trump bed is a gilded bench, more gold filigree supporting more white cushioning, atop which perches a decorative array of coffee-table-size books and what looks to be a pile of what’s known in the trade as “shelter magazines.” Let’s not bother with the rest of the room, except to say that mirrored walls play a large role, and there are at least two marble columns in evidence. Oh, almost forgot the coffered ceiling above the bed, painted with what appear to be cherubs or angels, flying around the chandelier as if it were the sun. I’ve been to Iraq, and I’ve been in four Saddam Hussein palaces over there, and that room in Trump Tower would fit right in with the decor of any one of them, right down to the flying cherubs and about umpty-eleven yards of gold leaf.

Now let me describe to you the “bedroom” typically occupied by enlisted sailors aboard a United States Navy destroyer such as the USS John S. McCain, which was involved in a collision with a tanker off the coast of Singapore last Sunday…. CONTINUED ON SALON

Friday, Aug. 25, 2017

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I’ve know for some time my DTW friend, Dr. John Gartner was working on this:

From his obsession with "the haters and losers" to his episodes of mania and delusion, it's all there on Twitter VIDEO

EXCERPT:

To make sense of his aberrant behavior, you need to understand, specifically, what is psychologically wrong with Donald Trump. His diagnosis is the Rosetta Stone to cracking the Trump Twitter code, revealing its underlying structure, and unfortunately, how much ­danger all the rest of us are in as a result. He is a malignant narcissist who is also on the bipolar spectrum. From a psychiatric perspective, the prognosis could not be more dire—for us.

Another recommended book by
Duty to Warn therapists

Much has been written about Trump having Narcissistic Personality Disorder. For example, Trump embodies the diagnostic criteria of believing himself to be “uniquely superior,” (“Only I can fix it”) to a degree that would be comical if it weren’t so frightening. He appears to literally believe that he knows more about everything than everybody, despite his lack of experience, study, intellectual curiosity, or even normal attention span. An amusing video montage made its way through social media, where through the miracle of editing, in the course of three minutes Trump brags about being the world’s greatest expert in twenty different subject areas, literally using the exact same sentence—just fill in the blank. “No one knows more about (fill in the blank) than me,” he repeats over and over, while it becomes more absurd, as his imagined portfolio of expertise expands with each improbable bombastic claim. When candidate Trump was asked from whom he sought foreign policy advice, he responded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain.” Just how good a brain he has is up for debate, but the narcissistic fantasy that any brain is so good it doesn’t need a brain trust bigger than me, myself, and I, is scary and crazy. “I know more about ISIS than the generals, believe me,” he boasts. Trump has more ways to say, “I am the best” than anybody. Believe me.

But as critics have pointed out, merely saying a leader is narcissistic is hardly disqualifying. Most are. But malignant narcissism is to garden variety Narcissistic Personality Disorder what a malignant tumor is to a benign one. Both are bad, but only one will kill you.

“The quintessence of evil,” was how Erich Fromm described malignant narcissism, a term he introduced in 1964. Fromm, a refugee from Nazi Germany, developed the diagnosis to explain Adolf Hitler…. READ ARTICLE

Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017Remember, you don’t have to be a member of Twitter read Tweets there, even from Donald Trump.

He was on All In With Chris Hayes tonight.

Duty to Warn therapists consider Trump to be a malignant narcissist. However this includes all or most of the characteristics of a sociopath. Here Donnie Deutsch reads the definition of sociopath on MSNBC. Other panelists take it as a joke at first but Deutsch brooks none of their flippancy.

At his rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Donald Trump remarked, of his decision to take on the Presidency, “Most people think I’m crazy to have done this. And I think they’re right.”

A strange consensus does appear to be forming around Trump’s mental state. Following Trump’s unhinged Phoenix speech, James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said on CNN, “I really question his … fitness to be in this office,” describing the address as “scary and disturbing” and characterizing Trump as a “complete intellectual, moral, and ethical void.” Last week, following Trump’s doubling-down on blaming “many sides” for white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Senator Bob Corker, a Republican of Tennessee, said that the President “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence, that he needs” to lead the country. Last Friday, Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat of California, introduced a resolution urging a medical and psychiatric evaluation of the President, pointing to an “alarming pattern of behavior and speech causing concern that a mental disorder may have

After Trump’s “fire and fury” remarks about North Korea, earlier this month, Dr. Bandy Lee, a professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, sent her second letter about Trump to all members of Congress, warning that his “severe emotional impediments” pose “a grave threat to international security.” Four colleagues joined her this time, but, she told me, “In the beginning, I was trying to write letters to Congress members and I couldn’t get anyone to sign on, even though nobody disagreed.” Her book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” forthcoming in October, collects essays by more than a dozen mental-health experts and makes the case that the Trump Presidency is an emergency that not only allows but may even require psychiatrists to depart from the Goldwater rule. Seeking contributors, Dr. Lee was mindful that most colleagues would be nervous walking the tightrope, so she approached prominent writers who might have enough stature to withstand criticism, including Philip Zimbardo, Judith Herman, Robert Jay Lifton, and Gail Sheehy. (Next month, Dr. Lee will have a closed meeting with several as-yet-unnamed lawmakers to advise them on how Congress might convene mental-health professionals to review the President’s state of mind.)

NY Times Opinion: Truth, Lies and Numbness

You grow numb. You grow weary. I recall discovering a few weeks back that President Trump had lied about two phone calls, one from the president of Mexico and one from the head of the Boy Scouts. The calls, supposedly to congratulate him, did not exist. They never happened. They were pure inventions. Asked if Trump had lied, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said, “I wouldn’t say it was a lie.”

I actually remember shrugging. The shrug was terrifying. This is how autocrats — or would-be autocrats — cement their power. They wear you down with their lies. They distract you. They want you to believe that 2+2=5. They want you to forget that freedom withers when the distinction between truth and falsehood dies. In a dictatorship there is a single font of “truth”: the voice of the dictator. Remember Trump at the Republican National Convention a little over a year ago: “I am your voice.” And now his voice is everywhere.

There’s the scripted Trump voice, which is fake. There’s the unscripted voice, which is genuine. The two tend to alternate; call this the choreography of disorientation. It’s confusing, like having a president who isn’t really a president but instead acts like the leader of a rabble-rousing movement. From “Truth, Lies and Numbness” NY Times

Until now, talk of Trump's erratic behavior and alleged narcissism was common on social media, late-night talk shows and among political opponents. But Trump's "fire and fury" comments about North Korea, a raucous rally in Arizona Tuesday and changing response to the violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., crossed a line for some Republicans and brought the conversation into the mainstream, even among some supporters. A poll by the media and technology company Morning Consult over the weekend showed 55% of respondents said Trump was not stable

What do I think about and what I do I think about it?

May, 1, 2016

I migrated everything from April to the basement file cabinet, so fitting of Spring, this blog starts anew, unfortunately, again it’s Trump on my mind. The archives for the two months I have been sharing cyberspace with billions of bloggers are below.

If you are a new reader, welcome. I do this blog alone, but always welcome critiques and ideas from you, I mean you, whoever is actually reading these words.